Baltimore Sun Editorial “Let the Eastern Shore be”

Posted on: January 12, 2018

20th century thinking solving 21st century transportation issues is the current problem with MDOT and MDTA. The major concerns have been well outline on the destruction and the negative pressures that this would have to the cultural and historic open-space, farmlands, and shorelines. Roads beget congestion and worse roads create sprawl, the issue that Maryland has spent time and money on preventing.

The need that Kent County residents or any other’s living on the Eastern Shore would have for a multi-lane highway crossing the bay and the purpose it would serve escapes logic. There is at least one pressing need and it may the only purpose perfectly described by the Sun; it does not involve anyone that lives on the east side of the bay:

“As much as we sympathize with commuters facing increasingly long delays at the Bay Bridge, there is a steep price to pay to temporarily relieve them. “If you build it, they will come” isn’t just a line from a movie, it’s an accurate description of what happens after road and bridge construction. Like water seeking the path of least resistance, development is bound to follow, and with it, destruction of wetlands and forests and loss of water, soil and air quality. Look at phosphorus and nutrient levels in Maryland’s rivers and streams — the most polluted are generally to be found nearest people. Better to concentrate growth in the region’s urban centers, redeveloping land already lost to development and preserve pristine land for future generations.”

Much of what makes Maryland such a great place to live is the diversity; cities, towns, villages, density, open space, farms, cityscapes, oceans and mountains. Growth seems to be the buzz word that powers the bulldozers that homogenized community character into a ubiquitous blur. Highways get people from point A to B with little thought or concern for what goes on in between.